Can I Build an Autonomous Drone Using Python or MicroPython on a Budget?

For a slower drone, there's a project by Tim Henewich that might interest you—Centauri, his quadcopter driven by MicroPython. He even shared his learnings in a presentation from the MicroPython Meetup! Check it out for some real-world insights.

The Raspberry Pi Pico is a solid option with PIO you can program in Python, allowing for precise control. Think of it like mimicking the human nervous system: fast responses with a more robust system managing the higher-level operations and data interpretation.

Absolutely, you can build a drone with Python! While the software aspect can be done in any language, keep in mind that a drone involves more than just coding. For intense real-time tasks like PID control or stabilization, you would typically want to use a faster language like C++ or Rust—but that doesn’t mean Python isn’t a valid choice for other parts of the project.

You can definitely use MicroPython, just be aware it has its limitations once you start scaling your project. I dealt with some issues while building small robots, but I managed to workaround them all.

The biggest thing to figure out is how you'll communicate with the flight controller. When I checked a few years back, Pixhawk and ArduPilot were pretty popular for these setups, but there might be new options available now.